What the heck had made her do that? Dot could have kicked herself. This girl – Mabel – wasn’t family. And never mind all that stuff about being friends. That didn’t make Mabel her responsibility. She had quite enough responsibilities on her plate already, thank you very much. Yet she had done what she always did when a problem presented itself. She had stepped up – pushing herself forward, Reg called it – ready to sort it out. Good old Dot, the one everybody relied on.
In the consternation that had followed Mabel’s announcement, Dot had, without a second thought, made her offer.
‘I’ll do it. I’ll be the delivery driver and Mabel – I mean, Miss Bradshaw – can do whatever you’ve put me down for. I don’t mind learning to drive.’
Don’t mind? Imagine the family’s faces when she told them that. Wouldn’t that be grand? Or would Reg’s howls of derision set everyone else against her doing any such thing? He was the head of the family and his influence counted. There must be some men out there who deserved such influence and used it wisely, but Ratty Reg wasn’t one of them.
Mr Mortimer puffed up his cheeks and blew out a breath. ‘Extraordinary! A woman, and a mere slip of a girl at that, actually refusing the job she’s been put down for. This is unprecedented. Miss Bradshaw, I am shocked. And you, my good woman, Mrs …?’
‘Green,’ said Dot. ‘Mrs Dorothy Green.’
‘Mrs Green, it isn’t your place to make an offer like that, though it should be said that your attitude does you far more credit than Miss Bradshaw’s does her. You’ve let yourself down badly, Miss Bradshaw. This will put a black mark against your name – and not just your name, but the names of all the women. It will reflect badly on all the women who work here. You’ve made everyone appear scatterbrained and unreliable.’
Dot glanced about, taking in the hardening looks on the faces around her. Even Lizzie, who had seemed such a bubbly little thing, had a flat, narrow-eyed expression. Alison had folded her arms.
‘I never intended—’ Mabel began.
‘Your intentions are beside the point,’ said Mr Mortimer. ‘I’ve a good mind to ask you to leave immediately and apply for work elsewhere.’
‘Mr Mortimer.’ Miss Emery stepped in. Her voice was quiet and respectful, but with an underlying firmness. ‘Perhaps we could discuss this at the end. We do need to send Mrs Green and Miss Foster on their way.’
‘Yes, we do. Mrs Green, you’ll be working on the trains as a parcels porter. Today there’s a special job for you and Miss Foster. Miss Emery, will you do the honours?’
‘If the rest of you wouldn’t mind clearing a path to the door,’ said Miss Emery, ‘I’ll show you where to go.’
‘I’m a clerk, not a porter,’ said Joan.
Mr Mortimer raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Are you declining to do as you’re told?’
‘Of course not. I just—’
‘Then kindly follow Miss Emery.’
Miss Emery marched from the room, Joan standing back politely to let Dot go next. Without a word, Miss Emery ran downstairs. It looked as if she might be about to rush straight out of the building, but instead she ducked through a door opposite the hatch, turning to face them. She waited for Joan to close the door.
‘You’re going to do an important job today. This is your chance to show what you’re made of.’
‘What is this job?’ asked Dot.
‘You’ll have to wait and see.’ Miss Emery opened the door, then pushed it to and added in a low voice, ‘Afterwards, you’re to keep quiet about it. Understood?’
They left the building.
‘Aren’t we going on a train?’ asked Dot as Miss Emery passed the station entrance. ‘Didn’t you say I’d be on the trains?’
‘You will, but not today.’
Dot and Joan scurried behind Miss Emery as she hastened down the road, along the length of the station’s soot-encrusted, four-storey building, beneath the ornate ironwork canopy on which some of the railway’s destinations – Scarborough, London, Blackpool – were displayed. At the point where the building curved round the corner, and the words Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway were carved high up beneath the clock, Miss Emery stopped beside an unusual vehicle painted in the LMS’s distinctive maroon. It had a snub-nosed cab with a single wheel at the front. Attached to its two back wheels was a large trailer, again painted in the company colour, in which lay a pair of sack trolleys. Beside the vehicle stood a man whose uniform boasted the company buttons and a badge on his lapel.
‘Mr Hope, thank you for waiting for us,’ said Miss Emery. ‘May I introduce Mrs Green and Miss Foster?’
‘How do?’ Mr Hope had the same sort of moustache as Clark Cable in Gone With the Wind, though that was where the similarity ended.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Dot. ‘I’ve never seen a van like this before.’
Mr Hope gave it a pat. Was he the one who had polished it to such a high shine? ‘It’s not a van. It’s a Scammell Mechanical Horse with a trailer.’
‘Is it used for deliveries?’ asked Dot. Was this the sort of vehicle Mabel would have driven?
‘That’s right. In you get, girls. It’ll be a bit of a squeeze with three of us.’
They set off, Dot in the middle.
‘Can you tell us what we’re doing?’ Joan asked.
‘I don’t know the answer to that myself,’ Mr Hope replied cheerfully. ‘I just know where we’re doing it, that’s all.’
Dot smothered a sigh. Ought this to be mysterious and exciting? Actually, it was more sobering than anything else. Scary, too, to think that in wartime, secrets and silence were so important. What was this job they were going to do? And what would she say later at home when she was asked about her first day? Was her first day on the railways to end with her telling lies to her family and her neighbours?
Mr Hope drove them out of town in the Longsight direction, checking road names as he went, and drew to a halt outside a church hall set back from the road in what might once have been a garden but was now cleared ready for vegetables.
They walked up the path. The door handle was a big ring that squeaked as it turned. The door didn’t budge. Mr Hope had another go.
‘Locked,’ he said.
He was about to knock when there was the sound of a key on the inside and the door opened to reveal a bespectacled young man with his sleeves rolled up. His general appearance was smart, but in a not-quite-enough-money kind of way. Though his shirt was neatly pressed, there was a suggestion of wear on the collar. His shoes were well polished but his trouser-legs weren’t quite wide enough, his turn-ups not quite deep enough.
‘We’re from the LMS,’ said Mr Hope. ‘We’re to report to Mrs Bateman.’
‘Names, please.’ The young man consulted a list.
‘My name’s Hope and these ladies are Mrs Green and Miss Foster.’
‘Peter Lofts. We’re expecting you. Come in. Just a mo while I lock the door behind you.’
Their heels tapped on bare floorboards as Mr Lofts led them along a corridor into the church hall, a huge room with high windows. Trestle tables stood in rows down the middle of the room and large cardboard boxes were stacked along the walls. As well as a group of men, there were some WVS women, easily recognisable by the badges on their lapels.
A middle-aged woman walked down the room towards them. She was dressed in the full WVS uniform of a greenish-grey jacket and skirt, a red blouse, and a hat with a badge on the front of the ribbon around the crown. The matching coat and scarf were draped over her arm, as if she wanted to make the point that she owned them. Blimey. That lot would have set her husband back the best part of a tenner. More money than sense, some folk.
‘The people from the LMS,’ said Mr Lofts.
‘I’m Mrs Bateman.’ As well as ten quid’s worth of smart new uniform, she had the voice to go with it. ‘Have you been told what we’re doing today?’
‘Corned beef!’ Mr Hope exclaimed.
Dot followed his gaze. There was indeed corned beef, a mountain of it in tins on a table by the wall.
‘As you can see,’ said Mrs Bateman, ‘corned beef … Tins of biscuits over there … Tinned soup … Tea and sugar at that end … Condensed milk behind you … And so on. We’re organising provisions for food dumps. Mr Lofts, the paperwork, if you’d be so good.’ Without sparing him a glance, she held out her hand and he put a clipboard with a wodge of paper attached into it. ‘We need to count all the tins and packets and check that the quantities tally with these lists here.’ Mrs Bateman riffled through the sheets on her clipboard. ‘Then we can make up the food crates, double-checking the contents going into each one.’ More riffling. ‘Lastly, the crates are to be labelled, as per these instructions.’ Riffle, riffle. ‘Got that? Good.’
‘What are the food crates for?’ asked Dot. ‘Is this in case of shortages?’ Goodness knows, they had repeatedly been told to expect those.
‘You don’t need to know, Mrs Brown.’
‘Green,’ said Dot. She would bet any money that Mrs Bateman wouldn’t have got Cordelia’s name wrong.
As Mrs Bateman bustled off, Peter Lofts sidled up to them.
‘It’s not for shortages … as such. Not the way you mean, anyway.’
Dot looked at Joan. ‘Are you as much in the dark as before, or is it just me?’
Joan smiled. She wasn’t a raving beauty, not like that Persepher-whatsit girl from first thing this morning, but she had pleasant features and clear skin. Her blue eyes looked serious, but that could just be because this escapade felt weighty. Being kept in the dark didn’t help.
The first job was to count up how many there were of each type of tin or packet.
‘This is because we have to put together collections of different sizes,’ Peter Lofts explained, ‘and every collection has to have each type of food in the same proportions.’
Dot was allocated the task of counting the tins of corned beef and sardines. Once the counting was under way, Mrs Bateman started stalking around the hall, placing a card on the corner of each table. The cards looked like – yes, old library catalogue cards. Dot picked one up. An address had been written on the reverse of a card for HARDY, Thomas: A Pair of Blue Eyes.
‘Hands to yourself, please.’ Mrs Bateman twitched the card from her fingers as deftly as any pickpocket and replaced it precisely so on the corner of the table.
When the counting was finished, the totals were collected from the helpers and various lists had to be certified by Mrs Bateman and a gaunt, silent gentleman in tweeds, who wore a monocle on a cord. Each time a page was presented to him, he elongated his face, thrust the monocle into position and locked it there by snapping his face back. Then, having initialled or signed using a gold-nib fountain pen, he stretched his eyes and contorted his mouth, whereupon the monocle pinged free.
‘Each table has an address card on it,’ said Mrs Bateman. ‘We’ve worked out the numbers of each item for each address. Mr Lofts will give out the lists. Remember, each address will receive a different quantity, so don’t get mixed up.’
Mr Hope, standing beside one of the tables, looked round for Dot and Joan. ‘This is the address we’ll be delivering to. Let’s get our crates packed and sealed, then we can help the others. If you two gather the tins, I’ll do the packing.’
It was a bit like that children’s game when you had to rush about without bumping into anyone. People milled around, consulting lists, counting tins and carrying armfuls.
‘I’ll count the tins,’ Dot said to Joan, ‘and you carry them to our table.’
She seemed to be surrounded by folk who were all counting not quite under their breath and it interfered with her own counting. She took a moment to dig a pencil out of her handbag and used it to mark every tenth tin with a cross, then all she had to do was count the tens. Easy!
As each collection was completed, there was a round of initialling by Mrs Bateman and the man with the monocle.
‘Where’s your collection going to?’ asked another WVS woman. She didn’t have the full clobber like Mrs Bateman, just the hat and the jacket.
‘I don’t think we’re supposed to say,’ said Dot.
‘Several are going to farms,’ said Joan. ‘I noticed as I went round.’
‘Lots of space, I suppose,’ said Mrs WVS. ‘All those barns.’
‘I’ll fetch the sack trolleys,’ said Mr Hope. ‘Once we’ve loaded the trailer, there’s a tarpaulin to put over the crates.’
‘In case any members of the public have X-ray vision,’ Joan murmured.
‘It isn’t a joking matter,’ said Peter Lofts, though he didn’t say it in a telling-off voice.
‘Since it’s to do with the war, I’m sure it isn’t,’ said Joan, ‘but I still don’t understand what all these crates are for.’
Peter Lofts replied by tilting his chin towards Mr Monocle, who was going through the many pieces of paper and seemed to find them fascinating.
Dot shifted. ‘Who is he, anyroad?’
‘He’s from the Invasion Committee. Food is being stored in locations all over the country to be used if we’re invaded.’